


Wildflower

by thejollysailor



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Battle of Five Armies - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bilbo Baggins Dies, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 06:50:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14949692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejollysailor/pseuds/thejollysailor
Summary: After her mother Bilbo's death, Bellis Baggins is left into the care of the Sackville-Bagginses who mistreats her and makes her a servant in her own home. She runs away and her adventures takes her both into south, to the deserts of Harad and the cities of Gondor and to the east, to Dale and the Lonely Mountain where she is swept up in the uncovering of a conspiracy but might also discover the truth of her own past along the way.





	Wildflower

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first fic in almost four years and it's super far out and removed from anything even resembling canon, but I just had to write it since the idea has been stirring in my mind for weeks now.

Like her life, the funeral of Bilbo Baggins was a scandal. She was laid to rest on the first Litheday in the year 2956 after a long and slow illness. The sun shone mercilessly from the sky as they carried her from her home at Bag End to her final resting place. The pallbearing was a sweaty and cumbersome affair, not just for the hobbits doing the deed but for all the guests, who did their best to swat away flies and hide their annoyance that this event had to take place on a day that was normally one of celebration and merriment. There were on that day and for many years to come, many titters of annoyance from the ladies of the Shire that Bilbo Baggins had decided to die at such an unfortunate and annoying time, right when the midsummer parties were about to be held. It was most unrespectable and inconsiderate to fall ill and die at such a time. Of all the mourners, only few did not feel nor let their annoyance with the weather and the ill-timed passing of the mistress of Bag End be voiced. One, was Hamfast Gamgee the gardener of the late mistress Baggins, who despite not belonging to her closest family and certainly not possessing the rank which would entitle him to do so in spite of that, led the procession. Besides him walked a child with one small, dirty fist tucked into Hamfast’s own, her other fist clutching the neckline of a strange silverlike coat of mail that nearly hung to her knees under the black silk dress she was wearing. Her aunt Lobelia had taken the silver shirt off her several times that morning, but the child had simply put it on again after every attempt to remove it from her until Lobelia, quite beside herself with exasperation over the child’s disobedience, had raised her hand, ready to strike the child. Then Primula Brandybuck, a very distant cousin of Bilbo’s, had caught said hand and pointedly told Lobelia that it was not her place to dictate what the child was to wear and no less to discipline her. A row ensued over who exactly Primula thought that she was and over who had jurisdiction over the child, that had gone on for so long that the bickering women were only stopped when the procession was about to start and therefore no time for the child to change. In the rush there was also no time to object to the child’s insisting to lead the procession with her erstwhile mother’s gardener in hand, rather than some more respectable relation. And so, it came that Bellis Baggins walked to her mother’s grave accompanied by a lowly gardener, in a tunic of mithril that was worth more than all of the Shire and had been gifted to her mother by a dwarf king long ago, though neither Bellis nor any of the other attendants knew that nor would for many years.

The scandal did not stop after Bilbo Baggins had been laid to rest. Though the steadfast Hamfast insisted that a will had been drafted by Mistress Baggins on her deathbed and it was searched for, it remained gone. Many doubted he existence of the such a will in the first place, among them the late Bilbo Baggins’ cousins Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. They altogether found it impossible to believe that Bilbo would leave the estate of Bag End to her gardener until her daughter’s coming off age, as Hamfast insisted had been her final wish. Such a bickering there was between the different factions of Bilbo’s family that the case was brought before the mayor of the Shire. Many, both those involved in the case and those simply curious, accumulated for the hearings which were held in Michel Delving. The case was argued and many solutions put forth. Some thought that Bilbo Baggins’ inheritance should be given wholly to her daughter, even though she was a bastard and too young to inherit at any rate. Some thought it should pass directly to some other relations, either near and obscure. Her Took relations insisted that they had no interest in the estate at all and only wanted the orphaned Bellis to be given into their care. Objections were made to this; were the Sackville-Bagginses, or the Brandybucks or the Whitfoots or whatever obscure family had a made a claim to Bag End to receive it so easily and no compensation be made for the orphaned child? It could not be so but the bickering over how many percent’s of the annual income for how many years and so on went on for so long that the mayor and his attorneys grew tired of this solution and scrapped it altogether. On the third and final day of the case it was decided that the estate of Bag End was to be left to the nearest of Bilbo’s relations, the Sackville-Bagginses. In return for this, they were to take in her daughter and to house her and care for her for as long as she lived and to give her a proper dowry if she ever married. It was the best that could be done for the girl, the mayor said, when the girl was in fact not a trueborn Baggins and her mother had not had the care to draft up a will for the girl’s future when she had the chance.   
The neglected protagonist of the trial, who had not said a word in the three days that she had sat in the front row of the court room still clad in a black mourning dress, then spoke up. Though she was fourteen years old she was smaller than a child ought to be at that age, but her voice was steady and stubborn when she requested that her mother’s personal belongings be left to her, and her alone. Lobelia, the smug new mistress of Bag End, objected before the mayor had even said a word. She knew, she said, that the mistress of Bag End had left behind some jewelry which surely belonged to the estate, not Bilbo Baggins personally. The mayor, who was furiously leafing through his lawbook did not have time to make an answer before the girl answered. She cared not for any jewels, she said, only for the sword that hung above the mantelpiece in her mother’s study, the silver shirt that she had worn at her funeral, a red leather book in which her mother had written while she was still alive as well as a small golden band that had belonged to her. Assured that she was not to be cheated of the pride of wearing the jewels belonging to the mistress of Bag End, Lobelia agreed to letting the girl have those few, and in her eyes worthless, trinkets. The case was then settled, though not without objections from the Tooks, who were loath to give Bellis into the care of the Sackville-Bagginses. Their objections were silenced not only by the mayor but by the other hobbits in attendance: was it not much better for the girl to stay in her own home and to benefit indirectly from all the riches that had just been denied her? In Tookborough she would only be a nuisance, a poor and unwanted relation with no prospects than maybe caring for her elderly family members. As a ward of the new master and mistress of Bag End, she would be much more privileged. She might eventually become mistress of Bag End herself, since the Sackville-Bagginses had a son about her age. This was for the best, everyone agreed as they stood outside the mayor’s office and the assembled slowly broke up. The Tooks were the last to leave and stood warily and watched as the Sackville-Bagginses prepared for their journey back to Hobbitton. To their slight disappointment, Bellis did not cry nor plead to be taken to Tookborough, a scene that might have even moved to mayor to reconsider his decision. She simply sat silently in the back of the wagon that was to take her back to a home that was no longer hers.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was the prologue! I will add character and additional tags as I continue to post chapters to this story.


End file.
